EA DICE to Optimize Frostbite 3 Engine for AMD Hardware

Advanced Micro Devices has begun to receive advantages from its design wins Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. for next-generation video game consoles. According to DICE, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Electronic Arts, it will optimize its Frostbite 3 video game engine, which will power numerous AAA titles primarily for AMD hardware since it is the backbone of both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Game consoles nowadays are the main revenue drivers for game developers and publishers thanks to absence of piracy and guaranteed interest from owners. Both next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony are based on Fusion system-on-chip with eight AMD Jaguar x86 cores as well as custom Radeon HD graphics engine based on GCN architecture. Therefore, when designing video games and engines, engineers will optimize everything for AMD general-purpose processors, graphics hardware as well as heterogeneous processing architecture in general.

“It makes sense that game developers would focus on AMD hardware with AMD hardware being the backbone of the next console generation,” a statement by AMD reads.

Optimization of Frostbite 3 engine for AMD architectures is a huge advantage for the company. EA DICE’s Frostbite 3 will power such titles as Battlefield 4, Need for Speed Rivals, Mirror's Edge 2 and many others. All of them will make the best use of AMD microprocessors and graphics processors, which will likely positively affect behavior of those games on PCs based on AMD technology. Therefore, AMD’s share on the market of enthusiast-class hardware will likely improve.

However, indirect advantages and optimization of game engines for AMD architectures does not seem to be enough for the company. The firm has inked a deal with DICE under which the latter will optimize Battlefield 4 game for AMD microprocessors, accelerated processing units and graphics processing units.

“DICE has a partnership with AMD specifically for Battlefield 4 on PC to showcase and optimize the game for AMD hardware. This does not exclude DICE from working with other partners to ensure players have a great experience across a wide set of PCs for all their titles,” a spokesman for Electronic Arts told IGN.